ETHNIC CONFLICTS

Ethnic Conflicts

Ethnic Conflicts

America's Role In The End Of South African Apartheid

The apartheid system of South Africa was one designed to beget racism, allowing a minority of whites to dominate a majority-black society economically and politically. The Afrikaner National Party regime controlled its citizens through the rule of law as enforced by persistent military presence in everyday life. During the 20th century and particularly after World War II, the primarily white, male leaders who held sway over US foreign policy had little incentive to enforce racial equality abroad, such problems were still brewing at home, unsolved (History of Apartheid in South Africa, 2011). The civil rights movement in the US eventually expanded into a front against racism and imperialism that inordinately impacted people of color worldwide.

A political system that accommodates and effectively condones apartheid is the antithesis to a healthy US democracy that bases itself on equal representation of the people, at least in principle and by law. The US certainly had its own a history of persecution and discrimination, as seen in the system of slavery, in the 18th century, and later on with the Jim Crow laws and institutionalized segregation, only to be overcome with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (Knight, 2006). Many African Americans could relate to the treatment of black South Africans by the white ruling class, and comparison to the Jim Crow era remains particularly salient. African Americans, who had made significant strides obtaining equality and justice for their communities incensed at the US government's complacency, with a blatantly racist and oppressive white-minority ruled regime.

A range of directives provided by the US President and ultimately by Congress helped lead to the end of apartheid in South Africa. Grassroots American resistance to apartheid and expressed political discontent culminating in the 1986 Act was a success in triggering the dismantling of the apartheid regime(Green, 2011). President Reagan's constructive engagement policy amounted to US appeasement and aided resistance efforts to apartheid in US and South Africa. The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, though not without its shortcomings, did achieve significant political objectives in pressuring the white-minority regime in South Africa to change, ultimately leading to the election of a less segregationist leader, President De Clerk, and finally to the release of ANC leader Nelson Mandela (ibid). With the democratic elections of 1994, the black majority won political power in South Africa, and the world witnessed the real ...